Helping Men to Be Confident

The Challenge Of Growing Up With A Stoic Mother

I recently had a conversation with my mother that illustrated for me the challenge of growing up with a stoic, critical, emotionally unavailable mother.

My parents are now in their late 80’s and we were headed out to Sunday lunch at their favourite club. On the way my mother starts telling me about an experience that morning in their local church service at the church where I grew up.

“Remember that crazy lady you used to live with?”, my mother says.

“You mean Megan?”, I guess.

“Yes, your friend Megan”.

A minute ago she was a crazy lady, now she’s my friend. Although we haven’t been in touch much since being flatmates years ago, I understand from what my parents tell me that Megan is still part of the ministry team at the church.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

Healthy Habits that Lower Anxiety and Fuel Sobriety

This is a guest post from Jackie Cortez from The Prevention Coalition.

You don’t have to be fitness-obsessed or a health food nut to know that healthy habits play a big role in how you feel. What you do on a day-to-day basis impacts your energy level and general well-being, as well as your emotional state and confidence level. Healthy habits are important for keeping our lives in balance, and this is especially true for men who are in recovery for addiction. When you work on making these healthy habits part of your daily routine, you will feel better physically and be mentally prepared to handle whatever comes your way. (more…)

By Jackie Cortez, ago

Breaking Bad Habits Through Self-Discipline

This is a guest post from Jackie Cortez from The Prevention Coalition.

Whether you want to stop eating refined sugar or finally break things off with a woman once for all, breaking bad habits requires sacrifice and self-discipline. By indulging in our bad habits, we may be harming our overall mental and physical health. Breaking the habits isn’t easy, but with the right strategies and some self-discipline, success is possible. (more…)

By Jackie Cortez, ago

Recovering From Childhood Issues, Difficult Mothers, Bullying, and Low Self-Esteem By Healing Your Past

I was recently interviewed by Christopher from The Craft of Charisma podcast about the work that I do with my clients to help them regain their natural confidence. The full interview ran over two hours as we went deep into many of the issues that have impacted our self-confidence in the past, how we worked through them and how we both now help other men too.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

12 Adult Signs That You Experienced Emotional Abandonment In Childhood

If we were surrounded by emotionally available adult caregivers as an infant, our developing brain and nervous system learned to regulate our emotions via a healthy emotional attachment to the adults around us. However if we were surrounded by emotionally unavailable adults who routinely dismissed, minimised or suppressed both their own emotions and ours, we experienced emotional abandonment.

Being denied the emotional connection we needed as an infant can have a traumatic effect on our developing brain. Emotional abandonment can lead to Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) or what Susan Anderson calls PTSD of Abandonment in adults. The primary result is that we fail to develop healthy adult emotional regulation and can often end up feeling overwhelmed by our own emotions. This effect can last long into adulthood until we find a way to address it.

Emotional abandonment is a massive problem even in communities and families that are otherwise free of overt abuse. It’s fairly easy to recognise when you’ve been on the receiving end of physical, sexual or emotional abuse as a child and most adults recognise that reaching out for help is the appropriate, responsible and shameless thing to do.

However, with emotional abandonment the problem is fundamentally one of neglect and this is more difficult to recognise. We typically only have our own experience of childhood to compare against in identifying what is and isn’t normal or healthy. When you’re just a kid and everyone around you is avoiding emotional connection, it’s hard not to conclude that this is how to live. (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Get A Controlling Mother Out Of Your Head

One of the challenges in growing up with a controlling mother is that they tend to implant their own insecurities into our heads. Controlling mothers are fundamentally driven by fear and the way that they assuage their own anxieties about their growing children is often by passing their insecurities onto us. If we’re too insecure to take any risks in life or to violate our parent’s absurd “rules”, then they don’t have to worry about us hurting ourselves, scaring them or ultimately leaving them.

The obvious problem with this is that all children inevitably grow up, leave their parents and form intimate relationships with other people. This can cause a lot of jealousy to an insecure and emotionally immature parent. Controlling mothers often try to manipulate their children into staying as long as possible in order to forestall the inevitable pain of separation. It’s ultimately a futile strategy since children growing up and leaving home is the natural order of things. Trying to stop us living our own lives just makes us want to get away even faster and really it’s just a consequence of the parent’s wounded inner child and unwillingness to grow up.

All this craziness can really mess with our heads and leave us feeling insecure as an adult. We can’t do much about our controlling mother’s behavior since trying to control her in return would just be using the same losing strategy that she’s been using on us all our lives. Manipulating other people doesn’t lead to true freedom or a deep sense of inner security.

A Controlling Mother Can Really Mess With Our Head and Undermine Our Self-Confidence

Instead, we need to learn to get our controlling mother out of our head. Here’s how to do it: (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Recover From Childhood Emotional Abandonment

One of the most challenging childhood scenarios for a man to recover from is emotional abandonment. I grew up in a household where emotions weren’t dealt with openly in ways that felt safe to me, so I know this scenario backwards; and so do most of my clients.

However, emotional abandonment can be hard to spot unless you know what you’re looking for so to find out whether emotional abandonment in childhood could still be affecting your adult life, check out my article on 12 Adult Signs That You’ve Experienced Emotional Abandonment In Childhood.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

Qi Gong Routines For Building Self-Confidence

For the past few months I’ve been practising Qi Gong (almost) every morning that I don’t have college, just before sunrise down near the beach. Qi Gong is a great way to start the day with some gentle exercise that gets your energy moving to start the day feeling more confident and grounded.

I find Qi Gong easier to practise than it’s brother Tai Chi, and you can easily follow along to a YouTube video. I bought a pair of Sony Wireless Bluetooth headphones so that I can put my iPhone on the ground a couple of metres in front of me and still hear the commentary. One of the reasons I like the videos below is because they have soothing, reassuring commentaries that sink into the subconscious after a few views.

I have often found strong emotions arising during or just after practising Qi Gong, so remember to take care of your inner child when doing this. Witness the emotions arise and let them go. If they’re particularly strong and/or persistent, find [intlink id=”1511″ type=”page”]someone to talk the feelings over with[/intlink].

There are heaps of Qi Gong tutorial videos on YouTube, and you can start with shorter ones and work your way up to longer routines if you’re not very fit yet. There’s plenty of variety so you don’t ever get bored with the same old routine every day. Get ready to meet your new YouTube friends Lee, Jeff and Marissa! (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Take Your Mother Off The Brake Pedal Of Your Life

Many of my coaching clients grew up with a critical, controlling, domineering mother. They come to me because I’ve experienced this myself and know how challenging it can be to overcome on your own. Despite the challenge they face, I find my clients often make huge breakthroughs in their lives once they start addressing their mother issues both in Skype sessions with me and by taking assertive action towards their goals in the real world. When they stop living to just please their tyrannical mother and silence the inner critic they internalized as a result of their unhealthy emotional attachment to her, they can finally start living their own lives on their own terms.

In one session recently a client summarized his progress by saying:

“I’ve feel like I’ve finally taken my mother off the brake pedal of my life”

I am so inspired by many of my client’s rapid progress that I want to share with you some of the specific things that we’ve all found helpful for taking our mothers off the brake pedal of our lives:

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By Graham Stoney, ago

You Never Know Where The Confident Man Program Will Take You

One of the confidence-building activities that I recommend in The Confident Man Program guide is learning to play a musical instrument. Learning to play music is awesome because it’s fun, it teaches persistence which is a valuable life skill, and it means you can ultimately join a band and jam with other musicians. Plus artistic skills like musicality are very attractive to women for evolutionary reasons; which is another way of saying that they make you an interesting, well-rounded man.

You never know where learning a skill like music can take you. In my case, I learned to play music as an adult and my chosen instrument was guitar. Sure, it’s taken a long time, but like any valuable skill the rewards lie waiting for the man willing to rise to the challenge of giving it a serious go.

This year I even put on my first solo show, at the 2017 Sydney Fringe Comedy Festival. If you’ve checked out my story, you’ll know that I used to be paralysed by anxiety in front of people; so for me to put together a full hour of original material and let go of worrying what the audience might think of me was a huge achievement. If you’re looking for some inspiration or are just wondering what’s possible for you, I think you’ll enjoy watching the video here: (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago